Dear TBS families,
We want to let you know about an upcoming staffing change in the Blackberry Creek classroom. Shannon Collins will be leaving the classroom, and former TBS teacher Claire Patterson will be returning to the classroom.
Shannon's decision is based on personal circumstance and her desire to fully meet the needs of her family, which includes three teenage children (the youngest of whom is in 8th grade here at TBS), and we fully support her: as a consummate professional, her dedication to teaching is only exceeded by her dedication to her family, and this has been a very difficult decision for her. She has been a faculty member at The Berkeley School since 2003 and a parent at the school even longer, and she and co-teacher Lisa Chung have gotten Blackberry Creek off to a great start this year.
As you might know, Claire left the Blackberry Creek classroom at the end of last year to take a position as an art specialist and classroom teacher at a new, Montessori-based charter school in Oakland. As she has begun to share with our community, her time there has been highly educative: through her experience, she came to understand the gifts and challenges of working as a specialist teacher, and, equally important, going outside the walls of The Berkeley School allowed her to understand the unique nature of our supportive, well-resourced, and child-centered professional environment. Those understandings, coupled with other experiences, led Claire to give notice to her new place of employment in September. Shortly after that, she contacted us to ask about the possibility of returning to The Berkeley School at some point in the future. So when Shannon informed us of her decision, we saw an immediate opportunity to bring Claire back into the fold, minimize the impact of a staffing transition, and most importantly, continue to meet the needs of the children in Blackberry Creek. Claire knows our program, curriculum, protocols, and traditions deeply, and she already has personal and instructional relationships with the first graders in the classroom, as well as working relationships with the other faculty, so she needs minimal time to get up to speed on instructional needs in the classroom.
Claire visited the classroom on Monday and together the three teachers led a discussion with students about the staffing transition. That afternoon we hosted a meeting with parents of children in Blackberry Creek, where we reviewed that conversation and answered parent questions about how we will maintain curricular and programmatic consistency through this change. If you were on campus this morning, you might have seen Claire leading the annual Halloween parade - a role she has had now for several years. Claire’s first full day at The Berkeley School will be tomorrow, Thursday, November 1st, in for Parent/Teacher conferences, while Shannon’s last day will be Tuesday, November 20th. During those overlapping weeks, the classroom will be staffed by all three teachers, and we will be giving Claire and Lisa additional time to meet in order to work together on planning the curriculum and instruction.
We encourage you to speak factually and clearly with your children about this staffing transition, and refrain from presenting the news in a "guess what?" or similar approach that sensationalizes the information. Our K-5 division truly is a village -- older siblings of the 21 students in Blackberry Creek are in all four of the 2/3 and 4/5 classrooms -- and we have many students who have had Shannon, Claire or both as past teachers across all grades of the school, so we know this information will spread quickly among the children. Because we expect that various children will feel a range of emotions about this change at different times, we hope you can join us in emphasizing to your child(ren) that this transition is a process, not a single event, and give them the space to express their feelings, thoughts and questions over time.
When you see them on campus over the next few weeks, please give Shannon your best wishes, and give Claire a warm welcome.
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